BUTTERFLIES LOVE TO DRINK, 



BUTTERFLIES have never had a 

 character for wisdom or fore- 

 sight. Indeed, they have been 

 made a type of frivolity and 

 now something worse is laid to their 

 charge. In a paper published by the 

 South London Entomological society 

 Mr, J. W. Tutt declares that some spe- 

 cies are painfully addicted to drinking. 

 This beverage, it maybe pleaded, is only 

 water, but it is possible to be over-ab- 

 sorptive of non-alcoholics. Excess in 

 tea is not unknown — perhaps the great 

 Dr. Johnson occasionally offended in 

 that respect — and even the pump may 

 be too often visited. But the accuser 

 states that some Butterflies drink more 

 than can be required by their tissues 

 under any possible conditions. It 

 would not have been surprising if, like 

 some other insects. Butterflies had been 

 almost total abstainers, at any rate, 

 from water, and had contented them- 

 selves with an occasional sip of nectar 

 from a flower. 



MALES ARE THE SINNERS. 



The excess in drinking seems to be 

 almost a masculine characteristic, for 

 the topers, he states, are the males. 

 They imbibe while the females are busy 

 laying eggs. This unequal division of 

 pleasure and labor is not wholly un- 

 known even among the highest of the 

 vertebrates; we have heard of cases 

 where the male was toping at the 

 "public" while the female was nursing 

 the children and doing the drudgery of 

 the household. Mr. Tutt has called 

 attention to a painful exhibition of de- 

 pravity which can often be observed in 

 an English country lane, where shallow 

 puddles are common, but never so well 

 as on one of the rough paths that wind 

 over the upper pastures in the Alps. 

 Butterflies are more abundant there than 

 in England, and they may be seen in 

 dozens absorbing the moisture from 

 damp patches. Most species are not 

 above taking a sip now and again, but 

 the majority may be classed as "mod- 



erate drinkers." The greater sinners 

 are the smaller ones, especially the 

 blues, and the little Butterfly which, 

 from its appearance, is called the 

 "small copper." There they sit, glued 

 as it were to the mud- — so besotted, 

 such victims to intemperance, that they 

 will not rise till the last moment to get 

 out of the way of horse or man. Some 

 thirty years ago Prof. Bonney in his "Al- 

 pine Regions," described this peculiar- 

 ity, sayingthat "they were apparently so 

 stupefied that they could scarcely be 

 induced to take wing — in fact, they 

 were drunk." 



OTHER LIQUIDS ARE LIKED. 



If we remember rightly, the female 

 occasionally is overcome by the temp- 

 tation to which her mate so readily 

 falls a victim. But we are by no means 

 sure that Butterflies are drinkers of 

 water only. Certainly they are not 

 particular about its purity; they will 

 swallow it in a condition which would 

 make a sanitarian shudder; nay, we 

 fear that a not inconsiderable admix- 

 ture of ammoniacal salts increases the 

 attraction of the beverage. It is ad- 

 mitted that both Moths and Butterflies 

 visit sugar, overripe fruit, and the like, 

 but it is pleaded that they do this for 

 food. Perhaps; but we fear this is not 

 the whole truth. The apologist has 

 forgotten that practice of entomolo- 

 gists called "sugaring," which is daub- 

 ing trunks of trees and other suitable 

 places with a mixture of which, no 

 doubt, sugar is the main ingredient, 

 but of which the attraction is enhanced 

 by a little rum. Every collector knows 

 what a deadly lure this is, and what 

 treasures the dark-lantern reveals as he 

 goes his rounds. True, this snare is 

 fatal only to the Moth, because at 

 night the Butterfly is asleep. If he 

 once adopted nocturnal habits we 

 know where he would be found, for he 

 is not insensible by day to the charms 

 of this mixture. 



182 



